Foreign News: Justice on Trial

In the week when the French Assembly proved again its willful capacity
for chaos, French justice also came in for well-deserved attack. "What
is wrong with our justice?" demanded France Dimanche. "Henceforward,"
added Paris' Paris-Presse, "it is hard to see how we can have the nerve
to give lessons to totalitarian police."

French justice, based on the Napoleonic Code, has long been viewed with
cynicism by its friends and alarm by disciples of Anglo-Saxon
procedures. "The Code exists to protect society from the criminal, not
to protect the criminal from judicial error," explains one...